


a bloody, exquisite masterpiece

by JeanSouth



Category: Free!
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-25
Updated: 2015-12-07
Packaged: 2018-02-22 14:57:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2511782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeanSouth/pseuds/JeanSouth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Haru frustrates him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> getting into souharu slowly. more to come. eventually...

Haru is not ambitious, and it kills Sousuke.

Haru is a tidal wave waiting to happen, idling as a calm ocean. He is a monster untried and untested, a  _waste_  to not utilize, and Sousuke's own aching, weary body frustrates him.

Sometimes, he wants to throw the weighted disks like a shot-put and watch something crash. He doesn’t want to be Sousuke with the shoulder injury. He wants to be Sousuke who stands on stage and accepts his medals. He wants to be Sousuke who isn’t ripped apart by nature in ways he shouldn’t face for another thirty years. He wants his dreams back.

“You don’t  _get it_ ,” he grits out, and he wonders if he will ever stop meeting Haru in dark corridors and bad lighting, picking fights. It’s getting ridiculous. “You’re not getting in Rin’s way, but you’re in your own! You could be the next Micheal Phelps. You could be our next gold medalist. You could  _try a little harder for all of us who can’t!”_

His feelings bubble up, strong, like a shaken can of pepsi. He’s not sure if he wants to vomit or leap at Haru, every bit of frustration building up in his chest, making it ache almost as badly as his shoulder. The look on Haru’s face is pinched tight, for him at least, and he almost frowns.

“How would you feel if I made you follow what I wanted?” Haru shows a stir of the tidal wave he is, the tremor that rushes through the water when he kicks off. “If I told you to give up dreaming and be free?”

Haru looks almost scared. He has no dreams, Sousuke thinks, briefly. He thinks it angrily, then full of pity. The despair that engulfs him at the thought of his life without the path his heart was set on feels like it stretches around them, blacking out the world. It’s suffocating.

“I’d be angry at you,” Sousuke feels himself deflate, shoulders sagging, and he  _wants_. He’s not sure what he wants, but he feels inexplicably young, too many options in front of him except the one he wants most. Haru’s hand is soft on his shoulder, warm, and he looks confused himself. “What’re we gonna do?”

Haru’s mouth twists, unable to come up with an answer. God help him if he says free, because Sousuke will drown him in a pool.

“I don’t know,” Haru says. His fingers softly work under the fabric of Sousuke’s shirt, and feel at the bracer he wears. He looks like he expected feverish hot skin and a writhing pain, instead of ordinary looking flesh in a weird garment. He’s almost reverent at touching it, as if it holds the realization for Haru that life is easily snatched away. “I really don’t know.”

His warmth is a small comfort; understanding he cannot find elsewhere. It is wholly unjudging and near painful in its honesty.

“You should swim,” Sousuke offers, a bite of sarcasm to his voice. He wonders if they’re meant to act like friends, now. The quirk of Haru’s lips is weird. “This changes nothing, you know.”

“I know,” Haru hums, and lets him go. “You should swim, too. If you love it, don’t give up.”

He’s so simplistic Sousuke wants to scream, but at the same time he’s sorta right.


	2. warm ice

Sousuke always sleeps with the windows wide open, even when it’s snowing up a storm outside and the wind’s rattling the blinds like hell itself is trying to rip into the room. He sleeps through that, too. On his stomach, usually.

One arm slung over Haru’s waist – Haru sleeps curled on his side, a pillow between his thighs, length-ways, so he can wrap his arms around it too. Except he doesn’t, when he’s awake, because of the rattling blinds, but if he closes the window, Sousuke’ll get up anyway to open them up again.

He’ll turn on the lights, with the one light that always shines right on Haru’s pillow and takes him from the drowsy, annoyed kind of awake to feeling like he’s just been abducted and might never sleep again.

Behind him, Sousuke shifts, long legs kicking the blanket out to make space. He’s in the  _middle_  of the bed already, a completely inconsiderate sleeper, and with his next movement, he manages to pull Haru closer.

He shouldn’t be able to. Haru isn’t exactly a lightweight, more like a tonne of compact muscle, but Sousuke pulls him closer anyway, hurt shoulder and all.

In the middle of the bed, Haru has to fight to get an arm free and drag a pillow under his head, since he’s been forced into the gap between the existing pillows. Sousuke’s leg comes up to rest on top of Haru’s, sticking his hot, muscled body up against Haru’s back.

It’s the only time he really sleeps on his side, Haru’s observed.

Sousuke’s breath is hot and smells minty when he moves his head closer too. The flow of air makes a strand of hair tickle at the corner of Haru’s eye, and he regrets coming over, just a bit.

It’s close, though. Always hot water for a nice shower after going to the pool. He has a toothbrush here and everything. Sousuke even has the right kind of conditioner to combat being in pools as often as they are.

And he’s not even a bad chef – a bit heavyhanded with the salt, but his mackerel’s not bad. He thinks he’s secretive in trying to cultivate a love of beef in Haru, but he’s practically transparent.

The wind calms a little around 2 in the morning, enough the blinds settle a bit, though they leave a sliver of light falling through onto their haphazard pile of clothes on the floor. Flecks of snow make shadows fall on it, and it’s weirdly soothing. Between that and the furnace at his back, Haru manages sleep.


	3. an infinite chasm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 19, confused.
> 
> Haru stares into the void on a Tuesday at approximately 3 o’clock, and the void stares back with sea foam green eyes.

It happens when he comes home from doing groceries, having taken out the trash this morning, cleaned up in the bathroom, and changed the sheets. Tuesdays are maintenance days, when he starts at four for the dinner shift in the restaurant.

He puts fish away, some new spices. Milk – not his favourite drink, but healthy bones are a must – some soy sauce, a new bag of rice. Everyday stuff. Staples of a household.

Then he opens his cupboard – the one near the fridge and the plates, and goes to put the box of cocoa pops in, next to the emergency breakfast bars and a tub of protein powder.

Haru’s not a big fan of breakfast as it stands. He and breakfast tolerate each other at best on a daily basis, and he definitely  _doesn’t like cocoa pops_. He doesn’t like cereal in general.

But Sousuke does. He has a plastic tub for freshness that lives on the counter top, and a favourite bowl. It’s terrifyingly ugly and has a matching spoon. He has cereal in it every morning Haru stays over, when he wakes up and drags himself out of bed with low blood pressure, switches on the little heater by the bed for when he comes back, and goes for cereal. He eats it slowly, swirling his spoon about until the milk is chocolatey and brown, then sips it down with the look of a man in years of a pleasant habit.

He hasn’t  _asked_  for them at Haru’s place. He hasn’t even hinted it.

And it’s the most worrying thing that Haru can’t remember what he was thinking when he picked them up and put them in his cart, telling him he  _didn’t think_. They just went in. Instinct. Not even a how-do-you-do-madame, but merging his habits with Sousuke’s.

They’re practically  _cohabiting_ , he realizes, and has to put the cocoa pops down. Not something he ever expected to do. Being tied down seemed so… strict. Terrifying. Not for him.

The sound of the door signals Makoto coming in, scarf loose and a smile on his face, fresh fish from the markets in a bag. He’s nice enough to drop by with it when it’s on his way home.

He tilts his head to the side slightly when Haru doesn’t move to take it, and frowns very, very slightly instead.

“Do you think Sousuke’s my  _boyfriend_?” Haru forces out, and the smile – endeared, pleased, happy for him – says enough about the situation.


	4. an empire of sand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Night, and then, morning.

Saturday morning is bright, the sun coming up for nine in the morning through the ever-present gap in the curtains, falling onto their pillows. Sousuke nuzzles at Haru’s nape to avoid the sun, the stubble of a week’s holiday scratching at Haru’s skin.

He groans; a deep, displeased noise at being up before noon on a weekend, only a few days before uni starts up again and he has to get up in the cold.

“Seaworld,” Haru prompts, quiet but hinting, and not at all subtle. Sousuke  _promised._ He groans again, louder this time, and wraps his arms around Haru’s torso to keep him from clambering out of bed and letting a cold draft under the covers. His biceps flex and tighten when he holds on more firmly, nipping at Haru’s shoulder in protest of his struggling.

Haru stills, arms crossing over Sousuke’s, and he tilts his jaw upwards. The posture isn’t really effective when he’s horizontal, but it gets the point across. They can get up and go to Seaworld, or Sousuke can have cold showers when Haru accidentally forgets using the tap’s hot water affects the shower.

“Fine,” Sousuke grumbles, rubbing his calf on Haru’s leg to get rid of an itch. Slowly, his arms loosen, his shoulders relaxing. In anyone else it would be going back to sleep, but Sousuke wakes up in the mental preparation of facing the cold until he sits up and pulls on loose, silky trousers. A gift from Kisumi, quite-stylish red and black things that somehow Haru never would have imagined Sousuke accepting. When he stands, his body tenses to ward off the cold, his abs hardening over his dark, thick treasure trail.

Slowly, he drags himself into the even colder kitchen, hitting the switch for the bedroom heater on his way out. Haru can’t help but feel smug when he bunches the blankets up over his shoulders and listens to the rustle of toast being made and cereal being poured, soothing him into a dozing state of half-sleep until Sousuke comes back, breakfast in hand.

“It’s probably gonna be busy,” Sousuke warns, sticking his cold hands on Haru’s warm legs, making him shiver. “Especially at the dolphin exhibit.”

At Haru’s dark look, he holds up his hands and shrugs, giving up the fight. Haru can’t help but believe that Sousuke is a pushover.


	5. weakness in glass

Sousuke doesn’t kiss much. Outside of his sleep, he’s never really overaffectionate anyway. Lately, he’s loosened up a little. A cuddle on the couch here and there, but his body’s too big to make it work, and Haru ends up half on the floor and stuck in a draft, in an increasingly sour mood about the impending cold.

Then every once in a while, he’ll kiss out of the blue.

(The brush of cheeks near the door before Haru leaves, Sousuke’s stubble scraping his skin, carrying the scent of chlorine and a hint of sweat, some deoderant. Chlorine, by far, is Haru’s favourite smell, but the scent of pool on Sousuke is nice.)

He just— does it. Sneaks up. No warning to let Haru prepare himself.

(The welcome home, when Sousuke smells of shower and tea tree bodywash, and their lips brush. He’s cleanshaven again and his lips are soft, with the taste of plain chapstick on them that rubs off on Haru.)

It’s almost like he takes delight in the surprise, Haru’s wide-eyed look narrowing, focusing on Sousuke’s lips, and claiming them back. It amazes him that a brush of skin on skin brings out his competitive spark, but he can’t be the only one whose heart just stopped and breath just fled because of a little touch.

He’ll make Sousuke breathless, heart racing, on his back on the couch and lips swollen. See how he likes being taken by surprise.

“That’s not like you,” Sousuke says, eventually, his head caged by Haru’s forearms where he leans on them, blocks Sousuke in. He goes pensively silent for a second and his chest stops moving quite so quickly. “Or actually, it sort of is.”

He licks his lips; pink tongue, teasing, unwitting.

“I guess you really like kissing.”

Sousuke is an  _idiot_.

“I really like you.”

There it is – the beat-skipping-heart and the breath that ghosts out.  


	6. some love is anticlimactic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> none of these are meant to read like a serial but they accidentally all just seem to line up

“We should get married.”

It comes out of nowhere. Well, not nowhere, actually. There have been more confusing non-sequiturs in Haru’s life, but none less expected than this one. Haru makes the effort to slowly pull himself from the sucking depths of their over-sized couch where he’s stuck between cushions and Sousuke’s chest.

“Sorry?” he tries first, because he’s speechless. More often than deserved, he gets stuck with the title of man of few words, but rarely does he think he fits it. In the background, some American actor says his I Do before the intrepid antagonist bursts through a church door to interrupt.

“We should get married,” Sousuke says again, eyes half on the TV, half asleep. He looks comfortable, relaxed and loose with his head propped up on one hand and his legs askew. Not, Haru thinks, like a man proposing to his boyfriend-of-four-years.

His fellow grocery shopper. His housemate. The person who patiently stops when he pauses to surreptitiously try to entice animals wandering the street.

Right, well, so Haru is already a big part of Sousuke’s life. And vice versa. Sousuke’s his breakfast-maker, his check if the doors are properly locked person, the man who makes sure they don’t run out of toothpaste.

Haru pauses, lets a moment of silence wash over him. Some kind of ridiculous soundtrack concludes a touching moment on the TV, so it’s not really silence as such. Sousuke’s cool facade slips just a slight when he’s scrutinized, and a tiny spark of anxiety flickers in his eyes, or in the set of his mouth. In the tension of his artfully arranged arms.

Something… weird… twists in Haru’s stomach. If he had to name it, it would be desire, but it has none of the lustful hints that usually connotes. He doesn’t want to see that anxiety in Sousuke’s slightly downward cast left eyebrow, or more realistically, he wants to be the one to make it go away. Or mitigate it. Or something.

“Okay,” he says eventually, and had another, but different, twist in the pit of his tummy at that the pleased light flickering behind Sousuke’s eyes. There’s a certain warmth to it that makes tugging down the ugly-but-supersoft blanket from the back of the couch onto his legs, like he’d been considering, unnecessary. Sousuke steals a kiss, and tugs him back down.

“I think a spring wedding might be nice,” Sousuke offers eventually, and Haru considers offering to set him up a pinterest board.


End file.
